Home, where the music's playin', part 2 of ?

I generally like dogs.

When I worked at Cox Radio Interactive my cohort Kayo owned a little maltisse named Grit. Grit was an outstanding young citizen. Whenever Kayo brought him she'd bring along his bed-cushion, and he'd spend most of the day there happily (and if sometimes I wanted to curl up with him and take a nap, I managed to resist). Sometimes he'd get up and wander around to say hello to everyone, and everyone would say hello to him and then, social duties done, he'd go and sit back down on his cushion and fall back asleep. He didn't ever pee on the furniture or floor, he never barked at anyone unfamiliar; in fact, he treated everyone as a friend - lessons for the rest of us (especially the part about not peeing on the furniture). My brother has a dog named Jane Doe - if I remember correctly they picked her up at a kennel in Orlando, Florida when they lived there (this was back in, what... 1992?). Jane is 15 (that's 105 to you and me), so she doesn't get it done like she used to, but she's been a wonderful addition to the family for all of those years - gentle, playful, inquisitive. Good dog.

I haven't always had such good luck with dogs - a pair of neighbor's dogs killed the first cat we owned (and were subsequently put down) after we moved to Lookout Mountain, Georgia (notice the error on the site - got to love Georgia government at work). Ironically, that family's son, Kevin, became one of my closest friends. A few years later another neighbor's dog, an enormous doberman, jumped up and bit me in the head as I ran by their house (which I did every day on the way home from school in stark terror, as this neighbor never leashed that fucking dog). I do not recall what became of it. At some point however, I decided, as most people do, that I was no longer afraid of any dog. That's when the aggresive dogs became merely annoying. And this brings me to the present.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Jersey.

Whenever I walk outside onto our verandah (oh yeah - Wanda has decided to call the porch a verandah now, though I'm uncertain if this is strictly correct, as every definition I've seen states that a verandah is only partially enclosed, and our porch is fully enclosed - anyone out there know for sure?), Jersey, the uphill neighbor's dog, dutifully comes charging down from his own deck and begins barking furiously at me, right up against the fence dividing our yards. If there weren't a fence there he'd charge up onto our verandah and bark at me from outside the screen door. If there weren't a screen door there he'd charge inside and bark right at my feet.

Now, we've been in this house since 2001. Jersey has been in his house since last year, and I've met him several times. That is to say, I've been out working in my yard, and Jersey has come charging up to me barking madly only to stop short, stop barking, and even cautiously allow me to pet him. One time he did this his charge was so aggressive that he wasn't able to stop in time (I had just mowed the lawn and the clippings made the surface unexpectedly slippery), and he plowed into my ankle at a near full tilt, which sounded like "yap yap yap yaP yAP YAP YAP YA-GARK!" This experience has not kept him from repeating the behavior. EVERY TIME this dog sees us, no matter the circumstances, he comes charging as close as he can and barks like his life depends on it.

EVERY TIME.

It could be morning, and we're out on the deck trying to enjoy a nice cup of coffee. Jersey spends at least 20 minutes barking at us before he goes to the other side of his yard and begins barking at the other neighbor's dogs. When that gets going it's absolute chaos - image 4 or 5 dogs separated only by a chain link fence all barking at the top of their lungs at one another. And it's always Jersey who's the instigator.

Or maybe I'm doing yardwork on a Sunday afternoon; every time I pass back and forth from the back yard to the front yard to grab or put away a tool or lawn implement, Jersey escorts me the length of his fence, barking the whole time.

Or maybe I'm just doing laundry - I go out the kitchen door, turn right, take one step, open laundry room door, enter laundry room. Jersey barks at me the entire time from his side of the fence, and for a little while after I'm out of sight just for good measure.

You get the picture.

We've even gone so far as to get one fo the ultra-sonic anti-bark trainers to try to curb the behavior. This device is pretty neat in theory - it has a sound sensor on it that understands what a dog bark sounds like and when it hears one it emits a sharp, high-frequency pitch that dogs aren't supposed to like, and the humans cannot hear. You might wonder (it does NOT "beg the question", for all of you people out there who use this phrase incorrectly : STOP THAT!!), if humans cannot hear it, how do we know it's doing what it claims? Well, the model of device which we tried had a little red LED on it to indicate when the relay had fired. It's still the case that maybe all the device does is light a little red LED when a dog barks, but we took it on faith that it's also actually emitting sound of some sort.

We took this device and placed it on the porch floor nearest to the fence behind which Jersey reigns. It didn't take long for Jersey and his new little pal (heretofore unmentioned, a new dog showed up a few months ago at the uphill neighbor's house, a smaller, yippier dog, a dog which , at this time, has no name) to come charging over and start barking at us. I was watching the little red LED and it was firing like mad, "shut up! shut up! shut UP!!!". The little dog actually stopped, got a confused look on its face, gave another little tentative bark ("shut up!"), and then ran for the safety of its own porch.

Jersey plows ahead, relentless. If anything, in fact, his barking gets even more furious. The red LED is blinking, shut up shut up shut up pleeeaasseee SHUT UP, but Jersey never even pauses for breath. The other little dog, I then noticed, was watching Jersey's heroic efforts. He gives a little bark, then his ears and tail both droop, and he's clearly thinking to himself "Oh, shit. Here we go again." He sort of slinks down the stairs, his ears flat back because the sensor is still screaming at Jersey to shut UP already and it's clearly bothering the little dog more than Jersey (who hasn't apparantly noticed anything but me the entire time), gives what I can only describe as a furtive glance at Jersey, and starts to bark at me again, though with signifigantly less enthusiasm than before.

This continued for 5 more minutes before I got bored with the show, took the batteries out of the device and took it back to the store as it clearly wasn't going to work. I don't know, perhaps Jersey has mastered circular breathing, but it became clear that, as long as I was going to stand there, he was by god going to bark at me until he'd made his point. Stupidest Fucking Dog on the Planet. Also possibly the hard-of-hearingest dog on the planet. Even the uphill neighbors are starting to get annoyed by this behavior, apparantly, as most times now when we go outside and Jersey runs over to bark at us, they'll pop out within 5 minutes or so and call him to heel, after which he seems to behave; for this we are profoundly thankful.

The Second Stupidest Fucking Dog on the Planet is our downhill neighbor's dog, Sam. As long as we've lived here, Sam starts barking at us whenever we go into our bedroom. We're not outside, he can't see us, but he can hear us, and if we dare to turn on the light it's even worse. Imagine this at 11:30 when you've just gotten back from a full day's work followed by a 2.5 hour rehearsal. You stumble into the bedroom, turn on the light, and immediately Sam is barking at you in his deep, throaty, alarming fashion. He carries on like this for some indeterminate amount of time, but never less than 10 minutes. Imagine trying to sleep with this going on right outside your window. Every night for 4 years.

I know that dogs are, or can be, smarter than this. A smart dog would realize that someone is living in the house next door that was vacant for about a week. It might take them a few days or weeks, but eventually the smart dog catches on. The not-so-smart dog, a year later, still hasn't adjusted to the idea. After 4 years, the jury is in - the dog is fucking stupid. Sam was the Stupidest Fucking Dog on the Planet until the advent of Jersey, which just goes to show you what a dog-eat-dog world this is. The competition is tough out there.

As a post-script, I would like to point out that if you go to one of the CXRI radio sites, and look around, the live "Now Playing" applet at the top, and the entire calendar on the right as well as the comprehensive concert/event system, including "Best Bets", the "Last Songs Played" listing, and the global event search are all my projects, still going strong! If you really want to see me get charged up ask me how the "Now Playing" applet works, when there are more than 90 stations all over the nation (including Hawaii!) feeding live song data all at once. That was a really cool project!